asking them why they hadn't fired. A dozen of them said their rifles wouldn't work. Checking, Collins found the rifles were jammed with dirt, or incorrectly assembled after cleaning.
Many of the men did not know how to put a rifle together. It wasn't Collins' fault, since he had joined the company only one day before.
Once assembled, A Company began the move south. This time, the men obeyed their sergeants' orders—just as long as they were moving south.
One-fourth of the company was missing.
The wounded who had made it could walk, but the shell-shocked mortar observer wandered around aimlessly if not helped. Men took turns helping him along.
The rain stopped, and the day became steamy, humid, and miserable. The men sweated. They had thrown away their canteens, and now they were forced to drink like animals from the muddy ditches and stinking rice paddies, fertilized with human feces.
All along the road south, they saw a litter of American equipment thrown aside by the other elements of 1st Battalion who had preceded them: helmets, rain gear, cartridge belts, even rifles. By late afternoon, men began to falter, and the company column spread out over two miles.
Captain Osburn passed the word that any man who fell out would be left behind. No one said very much. They all kept going.
The mortar observer kept moaning to himself, over and over, 'Rain, rain, rain.'
'Why the hell don't you shut up?' one of the men helping him asked bitterly.
At dark, a ragged, disheartened, stumbling mob of men straggled into Ch'onan. Here they found the rest of 1st Battalion, who had got there first, snoring in the muddy streets, tired, uncaring.
Captain Osburn located some trucks of the ROK Army and loaded his men in them. Battalion ordered him to take his company two miles south of Ch'onan and prepare a defensive position.
A Company moved into their designated area after dark. The men now had no entrenching tools. A few men scraped out shallow foxholes with their hands or mess utensils, Most of them fell down on the soggy earth and went to sleep.
General Dean, at Taejon, after hearing the full story of Task Force Smith, did not feel too badly about the situation. Smith had done the best he could, and he had allowed the 34th Infantry precious hours to prepare the P'yongt'aek-Ansong defense line.
Bill Dean knew very well that the holding of the P'yongt'aek-Ansong line was vital to his plan of defense. Where he made his mistake was believing that the understrength, untrained, undisciplined, and unprepared regiment to which he gave the orders was capable of carrying out such a mission against a foe as tough and numerous as the Inmun Gun.
At about 1600 on 6 July, Dean learned that not only had the 1st Battalion fallen back all the way below Ch'onan; more than fifteen miles below the natural defense terrain, but that the 3rd Battalion, which he had left at Ansong, had retreated back twenty miles to Ch'onan without even making contact with the enemy.
Dean turned his jeep toward Ch'onan. There, in the CP of Colonel Lovless, the commander of the 34th Infantry, he blew his top.
The withdrawal from P'yongt'aek had exposed his entire left flank. There were some ROK's on the left, called the Anti-Communist Youth Group, but in these Bill Dean rightly placed no confidence.
Lovless told him about Barth's instructions to bring the troops back from Ansong. Dean, who had been out of communication with Barth—few of the available radios would work in the rain—had to accept that.
Dropping Ansong, Dean demanded to know who had authorized the retreat from P'yongt'aek.
There was a long silence in the CP Lovless looked at Colonel Ayres, who finally said, 'I'll accept the responsibility for that.'
Dean almost told them to turn around and get their tails going north. But as he opened his mouth, he realized that it was already dark, and there could be danger of a night ambuscade on the march. He figured that there had been enough confusion already.
He made a painful decision to let the error stand.
But just as soon as he had returned to his own command post, he thought better of it. He sent word to Lovless to advance his regiment north until contact was made, and then to fight a delaying action.
Dean took responsibility for the precipitate drawback on himself, since he considered he had not made his intentions clear to all hands.
But wherever the fault lay, the result was tragic.
Late in the afternoon of 7 July, Major John J. Dunn, Operations Officer of the 34th Infantry, was with the 3rd Battalion of that regiment moving north from Ch'onan pursuant to Dean's orders. The battalion was able to advance only a few miles out of town before its lead elements were fired upon. The advance halted.
The 3rd Battalion deployed out into an area along the road that had excellent fields of fire, and prepared to delay the enemy.
While Major Dunn talked with the battalion commander, the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon leader, who had driven ahead of the battalion in a jeep, reported to the CP, The I&R Platoon leader showed a couple of bullet holes in his jacket, and one through his canteen. His platoon had been ambushed by a party of some forty enemy up ahead in a tiny village, but all except three of his men got out.
The leading rifle company of the battalion immediately started forward to rescue these men; Dunn went with it. On the way, they met Major Seegars, the Battalion S-3, who said that he had already found the missing men. Hearing this, Dunn told the rifle company to hold off its attack, and to take up a blocking position on the road.
As the company moved back, it drew a small amount of rifle fire. Immediately, some American soldiers began firing wildly and indiscriminately; Dunn was able to halt this only with difficulty. Suddenly, friendly mortar shells began dropping on the company's position.
Dunn angrily went to the rear to get somebody straightened out.
When he arrived at the 3rd Battalion's holding positions, he was surprised to find the battalion falling back along the road. He was not able to locate either the battalion commander or the exec at the CP.
Dunn then drove back to the regimental command post and reported the 3rd Battalion's action. A brand-new colonel, Robert R. Martin, was with Lovless. Martin had been hurriedly flown in from Japan, and he was wearing low quarter-shoes and an overseas cap. He had been sent to Korea at the express request of General Dean, who had known him in World War II, and at 1800 Dean had given him command of the 34th.
After listening to Dunn, Martin asked if Dunn thought the regiment would take orders from him.
'Yes, sir,' Dunn said.
'Then put them back in that position!'
Dunn roared back up the road, stopped the retreating battalion, and headed it back. As soon as it was turned around, Dunn picked up Major Seegars and two of the battalion's company commanders in his own jeep, and followed by a second jeep with a few enlisted men, pulled out ahead of the battalion.
A few hundred yards short of the abandoned good position, small-arms fire blazed at the two jeeps from close range. A group Dunn estimated to be about forty men had ambushed them.
Both Dunn and Seegars were hit immediately, Seegars. very badly. Several other men were wounded. The jeeps slued to a stop under the hail of bullets, and the men in them tumbled to the road.
Dunn was wounded severely in the head; an artery was pulsing bright red blood on the road. With great effort Dunn crawled off the road into a clump of bushes, and here he was able to stanch his bleeding. One of the enlisted men dragged Major Seegars to cover.
One of the officers with the party, unhit, said he would bring help, and took off to the south.
Keeping low, surrounded by enemy scouts, Dunn crawled up onto a small knoll. Down the road he could see the leading rifle company of the 3rd Battalion, which had been just behind the advance party. When the shooting began, these men had hit the dirt and commenced firing.
They were close enough for Dunn, too hurt to move, to recognize some of the men. But they did not advance, even though their officers knew that wounded men lay directly to their front, and they constituted a superior force to the scattered scouts before them.
Then Dunn heard an officer shout nervously, 'Fall back! Fall back!'
